After the Coach fall 2022 show, guests spilled out of Pier 36, roses in hand, Sonic Youth’s cover of The Carpenters’s ‘Superstar’ still ringing in their ears: “Don’t you remember you told me you loved me, baby?” The soundtrack and the flowers were Stuart Vevers’s nod to his Valentine’s Day slot during NYFW, but they also reflected his romantic mood for the season. “Seen through the lens of romance, every day can be romantic,” he said, waxing poetic during a preview.
Vevers’s design philosophy was to revisit the things he—and his customers—have loved most from Coach and organise the show in small capsules rather than adhere to a single, overarching theme. That structure is certainly interesting, especially in our post-pandemic age; the single, monolithic seasonal idea is less compelling than exploring the diversity and chaos of how real people dress. Offbeat styling unified the feeling of Vevers’s popular shearlings and babydoll dresses in secondary tones. The outerwear will surely be bestsellers; several starlets arrived in their big shearlings and many others rocked Vevers’s chevron striped ’70s-style puffers. Leather pieces were upcycled and reworked—see the trench in exit 27—or emblazoned with graffiti graphics by the Californian duo Mint & Serf. Corduroy wrap skirts, worn by all genders and body types, often knotted with flannel shirts around the waist, were one of Vevers’s coolest ideas—neither sexy nor cerebral, just about attitude. His crochet babydoll dresses were on the opposite end of the spectrum: The apex of sincerity and twee.
Set against an “ordinary and unusual” suburban backdrop where models walked dogs, unpacked groceries, and hung out on rooftops, the Coach collection had a cinematic quality to it. Several people remarked that it reminded them of E.T. or Stranger Things. But isn’t that just what life feels like when you’re in love? That the world revolves around you, your fantasies, and your obsessions? These were sweet, sentimental clothes to fall in love with—and in. Finding the partner, well, that’s up to you.
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